I had a challenge on my hands: to develop her brand, feel her vision and create her logo, which is essential to a new business as they need to display passion and personality.

In getting to know her and learn about her vision, goals, mission, and focus, I had a good feel for what she needed.

She wanted to be professional, yet personal, whimsical, and, of course, natural and hip.

We chose a color palate of natural colors that were bold, classy and fun.

We selected a font that was clean, casual and pleasant.

Then I got to work designing.

I designed a sunflower and placed it in the wording, selected font colors and created a honey bee.  These images brought her personality and natural brand into the selected font. From my initial sketch to completed work was a quick transition due to the fact that I got to know her and knew where she wanted to go with this.

Logos need to speak loudly to the world about your brand or who you are.

I believe the “Your Natural Buzz” logo has a lot to say.  What do you think?

When you meet someone face to face, you form a “first impression”. In online marketing, the difference is that your website is doing the talking for you. Words, color, content and graphic design all play a major role in creating a good web presence.

When hired by a customer from the Gulf Coast of Florida, we chose to pull hues and tones from a local image in designing their custom color palette. This enabled us to create a mood or a “feel” with our color selection.

In this image, we see blue sky, blue-green water, green/natural vegetation, grays and browns among the weathered wood, white clouds and white sand.

This client’s target market is higher end clients, therefore, we based the color scheme on the classier, elegant neutrals and will continue to accent with the more bold and emotion-invoking blues and greens.

Website to be launched soon … stay tuned!

Naming | Brand Development | Brand Identity | Logo Design | Business Cards | Website Design & Development

Logo design, colors and corporate fonts were selected in the brand identity. Website design and development by Carol Ensminger

Research of the products and services was implemented and the brand development process achieved. Brand Development done by Studio Z Marketing and Pinacle Peak Marketing

Visit them online: eLUMENation

I’ve seen this happen again and again… it’s too easy to get caught up in driving our own business growth… and we can soon lose track of what our customers really want and need… and why they came to us in the first place.

For the growth of your brand and business… Focus on the customer… Listen to the customer and deliver what they want. 

Source – my partner in crime

However, picking up the proper font style for the material is similarly as vital as the above mentioned factors. In fact several extremely successful products have become almost synonymous with a certain type of font. For example Coca Cola’s curved italics font or Addidas’s clear cut small letters need no further introduction about the company’s popularity. Those fonts are visually deep-rooted in the minds of millions of people around the world.

While choosing the suitable font and text size for a company’s logo or business card one should remember that the font style should perfectly represent the company’s overall brand image, its product or services.

People should be able to easily recognize the company once they see the logo. Every font creates a different mood with its particular style. So make sure before choosing one for the logo and brand identity, that it is able to convey the right message to the masses with its specific style and mood. Otherwise the general public may not be able to associate it with the brand itself.
If the design is properly done then it can generate more leads in its overall market demand. For example, if a designer is assigned to create a logo for a software company, they would choose a font that perfectly matches the company’s personality. As IBM uses the corporate font named “Men in blue”, the font used in IBM logo can be easily recognized by the unique eight stripes that forms the letters IBM. But if IBM uses any fonts, for example Papyrus, then it won’t be apt for the brand image. Papyrus looks like hand drawn letters with some irregular curves that fails to recreate the corporate high tech personality for which IBM is known worldwide.

Similarly, if someone is looking for a font to design a logo for a beauty product, then he/she may choose a font with curvy look or a fine feel to give the logo a girly representation. Since these letters boast a distinctive soothing and calm feeling upon the spectator it’s can be an appropriate font choice. But on the other hand if you are asked to pick the right font for a cement company, then curved fonts will not be very trustworthy. In that case go for a bold and strong font to give an impression of strength and power that people expect while buying this type of product from the market.

Picking a font can be an overwhelming yet fun experience. Many sites such as Veer or MyFonts offer a large selection of fonts to sort through and you are even able see your text in the font to help you choose the right font before you buy. Digital designing makes experimenting with different fonts easy and you get just the font you need to promote your business effectively.

Featured Image Source

An effective manner in which your Brand can utilize Drip Marketing is to have a consistent monthly marketing campaign to keep your Brand in the eyes of your present as ell as prospective clients. This will further assist in your clients coming to you as opposed to your sales force trying to find them.

In reality the only thing that is required for a Drip Marketing Campaign is a strategic call to action and a creative marketing plan. It is suggested to develop your Drip Marketing Campaign at the same time you prepare your annual marketing calendar.

So where do you go from here you ask?

Here is a four steps to success guideline that is followed y many marketing agencies.

1. Brainstorm and Develop a monthly marketing plan of action.
2. Execute your plan through strategically creative marketing promotions.
3. Determine your Target Market and demographics for this particular campaign.
4. Establish a continuity of your Brand through out all forms of marketing media.

Here are a few general ideas to get your mental receptors stimulated for different Drip Marketing Campaign ideas:

• Promotional Flyers
• Newsletters
• Email Marketing Campaigns
• Sales Brochures
• Press Kits

Your Drip Marketing campaign should be both informative and comforting to your prospective clients as well as your present clients. Your Drip Marketing campaign should keep your viewers informed of your current products, services and promotions. If you keep these elements into consideration you are sure to have a recipe for success. Remember Creative Matters and so does marketing!

This is so true: You only get one chance to make a favorable first impression. From logos to business cards; from print ads to company websites – your customers really do take notice of the effort that you put into the presentation of your brand and your marketing materials. Graphic design can be the last—and often overlooked—piece in the visual solution puzzle of your brand. Do not fall into the common traps of assuming that professional graphic design is unnecessary or that anyone can do it! Do not assume that your outdated flyer or website “gets the job done.” Your brand needs to stand out and be noticed! Your Brand Matters!

When it comes to your brand’s livelihood, leave it to the experts. Let us help you build your brand the right way with creative graphic design. Creative Matters!

I designed these coasters which will be used as a marketing piece to draw in more members to the brewery. The design was fun to do as I was able to be creative and put in a little grungy flare! Those at the Flying Bike Cooperative Brewery were very pleased with the design and have already been talking with me about the next project! Thank you Ryan and thank you to rest of the board for giving me this fun project! I look forward to flying (not on my bike, of course) up to Seattle soon and trying out some new brews!

Yes, maybe I go a bit overboard with the ‘brand’ thing, but until we understand the depth and meaning of a brand… how then, do we develop logos, colors, fonts, message, personality, voice and actions of the brand? Key areas of exploration into a brand includes, determining such values as: brand, traits, personality, message, voice, values, visual representation, positioning, mission/vision, and how to best represent the brand in all that you do.

Brand development serves several purposes: it provides clarity of the brand, meaning and purpose of the brand; it sets the standards and criteria for how you operate as a brand – internally and externally; and it prescribes the manner, voice, message, visual representation and experience you want your customers to have. Your brand is up front and personal, and shows itself in all that you do: the way you answer the phone, in your email messages, marketing materials and communications with customers and vendors – your brand is really determined by others, and their experience of the brand. They determine what your brand really stands for… so make your brand count. Determine the type of experience you want each customer to have… and be consistent in message, voice, personality and action – and deliver on that experience.

You might ask the big brands of the world why they put so much effort and money into their branding and marketing programs… and you might discover that brands really matter. In 2011, these were the tops three brands of the world and the value of their brands: Apple’s brand was valued at $153 billion… Google’s brand was valued at $111 billion… IBM’s brand was valued at $100 billion… and so on.

Your brand has its own value and hopefully, it’s an asset. I encourage you to develop your brand and live it, every day.

Source: My marketing partner Diane Zoller

Recently I was approached by a potential client who asked me about Intuit websites and how they compared to WordPress.

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the main event!

Introducing first…. from the red corner… he hails from Mountain View, CA, and was rated by many, as the best accounting program of the 80′s and 90′s. We have, the fooooormer middleweight champion of cyberspace, Innnnntuit. And… his opponent, in the blue corner, comes from Redwood City, CA and is the champion of the world and cyberspace, pleeeeeease welcome WoooorrrrrrdPrrreeess!

Last year Intuit rolled out this commercial. This commercial starts out with the frustrated business owners pulling to get more business by creating their own website. One hired a nephew, one has waited 5 months to get his site up, and one couple tried to build it themselves. They give up doing it on their own and end up going to Intuit to have their website done and voilà – they have a great website, their high on the search engine results and business is booming.

Or is it? Before you get Caught Cold, let’s get to the main event. Intuit vs. WordPress. Presiding this match we have the judge Carol Ensminger!

As a business owner, you want your website to reflect your brand and increase business. You want your site to not only look professional, you want it to be unique, and to show the viewer you are credible and trustworthy. AND you want to see results with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in order to drive your clients to site and business. Will you get this with Intuit? Will you get this with WordPress? Let’s battle it out!

First, Intuit looks like all the other Inuit websites – boxy, generic, and the pages look thrown together. Sure, Intuit offers templates but you pay a monthly fee for them. Or they hook you in with the “free” for 1 month, then up the rate to $5.99 and eventually up to $7.99 – even more depending on the size of blog and if you are selling products on the site. Before you know it, you can run up quite a monthly bill! If you were to purchase the Gold package with blog and eCommerce, your total after 3 years would be close to $3000. But wait … it get’s worse.

Intuit is not SEO friendly! In order to get Google, Yahoo and Bing to like your pages you will need to learn some advanced SEO techniques and apply them to the Intuit program.

Intuit does not have a simple contact Management System (CMS) and it very difficult to do any customization. Like the commercial, some cave and purchase the Intuit plan – spending way to much money customizing their sites. Others resort to finding a local designer to work on the project. However, Intuit isn’t Apple friendly and most designer work on the ever popular Apple Macintosh. I understand they want to make it difficult on the end users, including the designers who would take away their work, but most can’t do the edits the client desires. Designers can’t have direct access to the style sheet which is how must of us designers customize a website. If down the road you decided to move your site over to your own server or host it elsewhere, Intuit claims you can have the HTML code, but there is no guarantees – it may work and it may not! So, after all this time and money, you don’t even own you own website. Sounds like a low blow, doesn’t it?

Up next in the ring … WordPress

Now, you all know that Creative Matter is a graphic design company where we not only design, we develop websites. I am, of course, sitting ringside cheering on WordPress. I will be honest, I want your business, but I also want to be honest and upfront about Intuit websites before I decide to work on your website. I do have a love to some degree for Intuit as it has made it easy for me to take some of their unhappy clients and turn them into very happy and thriving businesses. Also, if you are considering hiring me to work on your Intuit website, I want you to know what you are getting yourself into before we wast a lot of our precious time. I know what I am getting into, I’ve done Intuit websites before. It takes us designers a lot longer to work on these websites than you think, adding up the hours while we travel through Intuit’s coding nightmares. Then, you as the client, are upset with the hours and ultimately the bill, and I don’t like to be in that position anymore than you are. Believe me, I am not alone, there are a number of “I hate Intuit” websites out there.

First off, WordPress is free to use. WordPress is open source application and is non-profit. WordPress is currently the most popular content management system out in cyberspace. Although we use it to build all our websites, it is primarily known as a blogging platform but it doesn’t cost a monthly fee just to blog!

WordPress is far superior when it comes to SEO and new and updated content shows up almost instantly in google searches. Most themes have built in applications and you don’t even have to set the key words or meta tags in your posts.

The back end (CMS) of WordPress is well organized and very user friendly. There is no need to know HTML, php, javascript or other coding languages. You can edit content, change colors, and add unlimited photos. Last time I checked, Intuit did not offer that feature. Kind of puts Intuit on the ropes, don’t you think?

There are numerous templates to choose from ranging from free and you can purchase a theme which is on average $40. I have a number of templates I use, making each one customized to fit your brand. There are also many quick changing features and add-on’s that make your site just how you want it.

Now, if you are like most people, your focus is your business and not how to set-up and customize WordPress. We have a saying in our office, “Do what you do best and outsource the rest!” That is where someone like me comes in. I typically charge anywhere from $500 – $1500 to set-up and customize the WordPress theme. Working with a reliable and trusted designer has many more benefits than not having to work with Intuit. Having an experienced designer work on your WordPress site will save you countless hours allowing you to focus on the business at hand. After the one time fee of setting up the site, all you need to pay is the hosting fees a year to keep the site going. A typical domain name is about $10 a year and the hosting for WordPress comes to about $64 a year bringing your total yearly cost to $74, and the site is yours to keep! That is a huge difference compared to a year contract with Intuit.

WordPress saves you time and money in the long-run.

Ding, Ding, Ding  … The winner is WordPress!